This journal started in Diwali, and continued to just after the New Year.
I anticipated that it would be about light and ritual and women…
There was instead a good deal of unanticipated loss.
I withheld many pages from this public forum
(though I have no problem with friends flipping through my journals)
because I documented the struggle of personal losses and deaths.

My antidote, however, is to paint cheerful things.
That is the story my journal reveals.
Colorful items, beloved memories — a visual gratitude defying the
sadness and craziness of our country and the horror of the stories.
If I didn’t practice gratitude I do not know how I’d make it.

I didn’t write about ritual, I created ritual.
Click through and see the full image!